


The Toll of History

by akamarykate



Category: Oxford Time Travel universe - Willis
Genre: Gen, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 03:52:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/37524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akamarykate/pseuds/akamarykate





	The Toll of History

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Skogkatt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skogkatt/gifts).



_"Is that where you buried everybody?" he said, holding the light steady on the smooth white mounds.  
"Yes," Kivrin said.  
"Did they die a long time ago?"  
She turned the stallion and started up the hill. "No."_  
~ Connie Willis, _The Doomsday Book_

When Kivrin comes back, the whole of Britain seems to be in mourning. This is right and proper, she thinks numbly. Roche and Agnes, Rosemund and Eliwys--they were more than statistics, more than an estimated percentage of an estimated population. They were an entire world of possibilities lost, and they should not be forgotten. She lets Britain's mourning envelop her: the lowered flags, the moments of silence, the lists of names read aloud, the bells.

They are the wrong bells. Too melodic, too near, too bright. Nothing at all like the bell she rang for Father Roche, the one that left rope burns on her hand.

When she realizes this, she finally understands that no one in this time is mourning with her, and that she cannot mourn with them. They are not mourning the same thing at all.

*

The first time she goes into a grocer's, the fluorescent lighting assaults her eyes, and she blinks into a world she barely remembers. Apricots, cucumbers, sausages, Weetabix, lemons, chicken thighs, Tim Tams, cinnamon, leaf lettuce--and all of it in the dead of winter.

The weight of so much choice leaves her stunned and dizzy. She clutches a shelf for support, and her hand curls around a little cake covered in magenta icing and wrapped in plastic. Rosemund would love this, she thinks. Agnes would...

Kivrin stumbles out to the street without buying anything. The air is warming with the false promise of spring, too soon. She wants to fight against it, wants to call down the cold and freeze again, from the inside out. There shouldn't be spring this year, not if they aren't here to see it.

Spring will come, though. Maybe not this week, but come it will.

Just as it came in 1349.

*

After her debriefing with what is left of the history faculty, Mr. Dunworthy takes her to the Lamb and Cross and buys them each a pint. "To absent friends," he says.

Kivrin holds his gaze as she clinks her glass against his. "Absent friends."

"I am sorry about--" He waves his hand in the general direction of the college. "--all of that. It must have been painful to speak of your ordeal."

She finally looks away. "They're historians," she says. "They're not so much interested in who I met as they are in whether or not their theories were validated by my experiences."

"But your experiences were more than just facts."

She nods, knowing Mr. Dunworthy has listened to every word she spoke into her recorder. The silence stretches between them until the mantle clock chimes.

Kivrin shifts in her chair, looks down at her hands. The rope burns have faded to nothing. "Tell me about Dr. Ahrens."

Mr. Dunworthy blinks owlishly. "What do you mean?"

"I knew her from the time we spent together before I left, when she was giving me inoculations and telling me about medicinal herbs. But I never really knew her as you did, as a friend."

Mr. Dunworthy very nearly smiles; it's there in the deepening creases around his eyes, then gone. "She was a good friend," he says. "Her name was Mary."

Kivrin nods. "Tell me about Mary."


End file.
